There are top-shelf authors that insist on writing everything in cursive, in legal pads (God help the poor schlubs that have to transcribe it, though). They insist that they can’t be creative, otherwise. There are musicians (like Rhiannon Giddens), that always perform barefoot.
Most of the Great Masters could work in many mediums, and they chose specific media, to do specific works, because they knew that the medium would “push back,” and inform the work.
Michelangelo was quoted as saying something like he “saw the statue in the stone,” and that was why selecting the rock was as important as any other part of the process.
Many folks take great pains, to do their work in specific contexts, as that affects their creativity.
Creativity isn’t something that is easy to commoditize.
> The alternative is "art"
That's how you read the term. Unfortunately, for most of your potential viewers, "content" is "art" but commissioned by the ton, like beef.
Everyone's so terrified that they might stand out.
My friends use my stuff all the time, and they are always gobsmacked, when they find out I did it.
I do it for free, and tend to follow my own muse, as opposed to $_BUZZWORD_DU_JOUR, so tech folks aren’t really impressed, when I mention it (like, now, I suspect).
It’s not really very rewarding to talk about it. Either people get all impressed, or insulting (the typical HN reaction). Neither does much for me, so I’m best off just keeping my mouth shut, and my mind on my work. There’s others that are much better than me. I’m just grateful to be able to Give Back.
That’s not pretension; it’s just facts. But there’s often no need to mention the facts.
> The alternative is "art"
Maybe. Or alternative could be to use the words you used in your first sentence: writer, photographer, filmmaker.
If you talk about your work using deflationary words like content then that could affect how you think about it and present it. Do yourself a favor and use grand words because I bet it's important to you.
I know there's a big bias against 'business speak' among engineers. But a lot of the time, it's just a matter of abstracting in a domain engineers typically don't work in. It's useful to describe from the 'business' point-of-view since terms like this can be used to analyze the similarities across these similar 'content creation' type businesses.
I'm trying to think of a similar case where to an outsider, the 'tech speak' jargon a software engineer would use seems useless to an outsider. Maybe things like 'framework', or 'deployment', or 'library', or web application instead of web site.
I don't particularly like the term "content creator". It feels too blunt and sterile to be particularly useful. But it does seem to be generally useful in how wide-reachingly descriptive it is.
Being a musician has nothing to do with the output of working with wood, and likewise, my prowess on gouges, chisels, and saws is irrespective of my ability to write an interesting chord progression. Using a catch-all term to amalgamate the output of multiple specializations I think detracts from the results being, well... special.
Just my .02c
Though, I will admit that I never include cooking in that. Food, for some reason, has never felt, to me, like "content". Can't say I've ever interrogated why.